


Two Books, One Journey

by redsixwing



Category: Torna the Golden Country, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Depressing, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied Relationships, Jin is an unreliable narrator, Past Character Death, Perspective Shifting, Spoilers, What Was I Thinking?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 16:45:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17267729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsixwing/pseuds/redsixwing
Summary: Post- Torna the Golden Country fic. Spoilers for that DLC, including in this summary.Jin recovers Brighid's diary and one more book, and sends them with Addam to Hugo's funeral. Everyone is mourning and (almost) everything is terrible.Years later, Brighid and her new Driver look at books.The more I think about this game, the sadder I am about it. So here, have a big ol' parfait of sad.





	Two Books, One Journey

It was Jin who hired a scavenger to dive after the sinking Titan. He paid the scandalous sums they wanted to follow in her wake without batting an eye, without first asking Lora if it was all right. Vortices, said the stripling in the diver's helmet. And the clouds gone thick where Torna had fallen, and more corrosive than was usual. It demanded hazard pay. 

For this, he was sure she'd understand. 

The thin Gormotti bit the coins one at a time, nodded, and was gone over the edge of the ship before he could so much as wish them luck. 

It was a long dive, and if not for the way the cable played in the pulleys, and the way the salvager's Nopon teammate stood by and flapped and spun and called encouragement, he would have thought he'd just added one to the death toll. But soon, the buoy broke the surface, the eared helmet not far behind it. With a gasp, the salvager heaved back over the rail, dragging a net behind. 

Jin found himself anxious, the first thing he'd felt since the Aegises had lit the sky afire. Since he'd awoken flat on his back not knowing where Lora was, and felt a surge of blind panic. That had simmered down, apparently, into this.

The kid handed him his prize and said, "I hope you got what you wanted, mister. I ain't going back down there for any money."

In his haste, he forgot to say something suitably grateful, and only strode away. 

*

By some scrap of luck, he made it before Addam left. There was Haze, all red-white-gold and glowing gently in the mist; there was Lora, and thank goodness for that. There was the new Blade, her outfit terribly wrong, jarringly crimson. Well, good. If it reminded her of all the blood she'd shed in her frenzy, so much the better. He brushed past her to reach her Driver. (Not, he thought, her master. If only.)

"Jin," Addam breathed. "I- Mor Ardain-" Tears welled in his golden eyes, no more than half a breath from the surface. Closer, since Torna fell. He bit his lip, and Jin knew why. He could hear it too, Hugo's voice teasing him for the ease with which those tears fell. 

Curse that tender heart, for nurturing the Blade that had cut down his home. And curse his own, for the fear it still harbored. 

Jin raised the bundle he carried toward the prince. Was he still that, with no country left beneath him? He was still a Driver even with only his ruined Aegis, or so Jin supposed.

"What's that?" Lora, curious even with the pall of grief on her voice. Her little hand plucked at his sleeve, and he moved, obliging the unspoken wish. The fabric that bound it slithered off, ruined by its brief immersion. The journal within - Brighid's journal, bound in Imperial blue and set with a polished fragment of Mor Ardain's black stone - looked little better. Behind it, one of Minoth's hand-penned volumes with half its cover chewed away. He hadn't unrolled it to see which.

"I hired a salvager," he heard himself say. And, more roughly than he intended: "You have their cores. Take these back with them." 

"Jin," Addam whispered, and the Driver's hands clasped over his, and took the bundle as gently as if it were a part of Brighid. As reverently as he'd handled her blackened Core, hers and Aegaeon's. Jin supposed it was a part of her, for all it mattered. And the other? He'd seen her read it, again and again, heard her ask Minoth so many times about trivialities that the Flesh Eater had stopped answering them. 

"Did you find yours?" Lora, all innocence. He faced her, nodded. 

"I have it," he said. "And the mask." And, remembering at last that he was speaking to his Prince, relenting, he turned and bowed to Addam. "Travel safely." 

But the Prince and his blood-red Blade were retreating up the gangplank, their ship's Titan already taking great gulps of clean air in preparation for its journey. Behind them and irrelevant, the Special Inquisitor wittered about tides.

*

Addam was never one to pry. His wife wouldn't abide it, and Mythra would've... 

Pyra would be unhappy with him. 

So he left the journal closed, even when it oozed an ominously inky puddle. It did it once, and he moved it to a small table, and made sure nothing of his was near it. It didn't do it again.

Hugo's funeral was as grand an affair as Mor Ardain could manage, great gouts of flame to swallow the small body, august enclosures to hold the Imperial Jewels while they rested from their travails. Why don't they take them to Indol, someone asked. And someone else said, no, they're ours. And Addam felt a surge of happiness, that they were learning - and a fresh surge of grief, for Hugo who belonged to them, before to anyone else. Who had loved bright Brighid and cautious Aegaeon, and aspired to so much more than... this.

The books, he saw taken to Brighid's room. There was a shelf; this latest volume sat beside all the rest. New books to the left, all unmarred leather and ornamental metalwork. Older books to the right, some still pristine. Many scuffed, few as sorry as the specimen he'd brought back. And just a few missing entirely, their places held open by filigreed bookends with the names of Ardainian royalty engraved upon them. 

He took Pyra and fled, to Leftheria where his wife awaited him. Where their son was alive and real and healthy, two people he could love exuberantly even after that. 

(What shall we name him? he'd asked. And she'd laughed and said, of course I called him Hugo. And he'd wept, and she'd kissed him for it, and their son had golden eyes.)

*

She awoke in the hands of a shockingly young girl. 

"I am Brighid," the Jewel of Mor Ardain said. "And if you dare my flames, my power is yours." 

"My name is Morag," said the girl, and she bowed, a very proper bow for a very small girl. She looked up at Brighid with wide, dark eyes, too old for her little face. "I'm not the Emperor," she said, like a warning. "I hope that's okay."

"You are my Driver," Brighid said, and she bent to look into Morag's face, to lift the pointed chin with a single slim finger and smile at the fearless gaze. "And that is all that matters." 

Later, they would talk about having a lot of Drivers, and no memories. Later, they would stand before Brighid's bookshelf, and she would pick up one slim volume with a gloved hand. "Hugo," she read aloud, in a musing tone. 

"Oh, what a pity!" For she had cracked the cover, and found a ruin within, pages fused together, blue ink washed out to a glittering stain. But it was Morag who looked behind the book with the intense curiosity that already defined her character, and said "Ah!" 

And before Brighid could stop her, she reached her hand in and pulled out a scroll, hand-written on bark. She held it up, solemn face peeping over its edge. "What You Must Protect," Brighid read aloud. 

"That's not my handwriting, is it? Very well, let's look at that one." Above the ancient book's edge, Morag's face broke into a smile.


End file.
